“Okay. Whatever you want. I owe you. I don’t want you to think badly of me. Where, at the baths?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll find you.”

“Today,” she gasped. “It has to be today.”

Again she heard him hesitate, and she cursed herself for her lack of control.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “I have a study break this afternoon. I can get away. I’ll see you there. What, about three?”

“That will be fine.”

“Okay. Ciao . . .”

She put away the phone. Her heart was hammering, her breath short.

She made an excuse and got out of the office. She changed into a shapeless patterned smock, loosely tied by a belt at the waist.

She caught a taxi back to the baths.

This time she walked around the complex until she came to the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. In the sixteenth century this had been built into the ruins of the baths, to designs by Michelangelo. The church’s name proudly adorned one of those broken-open domes.

Inside, the church was bright, spacious, and open, nearly a hundred yards across, richly decorated. There was an elaborate sundial inscribed on the floor, a great bronze gash that cut across one nave. She followed it to a complex design at its termination, where a spot of sunlight would map the solstices of years far into her own future. Here and there she made out relics of the building’s origin, like seashell motifs on the walls. Michelangelo and the architects had used this great vaulting space well, but once this had been nothing more than the tepidarium of the tremendous complex of the baths.

She had chosen this place for Daniel’s sake. She had been nervous about how he would react to her, especially in her changed condition. She thought the baths would pique his interest in the deep history of Rome, and how its buildings had been used and reused. Maybe he would come for the buildings, if not for her.

“. . . Lucia.”

She turned, and there he was. He wore what looked like the same faded jeans, a T-shirt labeled ROSWELL U RUNNING TEAM, and he clutched a baseball cap in his hand. The light behind him caught the unruly hair around his face, making it glow red.

He grinned. “You’ve changed. You’re still beautiful, of course. What’s different? . . .”

At the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the tears seemed to explode from her, fueled by longing, unhappiness, grief. She dropped her head and covered her face with her hands. How she would have reacted if he had come to her and taken her in his arms, she didn’t know.